8.3: Does Marinetti work with GNO?
Description
This article is from the Apple II GNO FAQ, by Devin Reade with numerous contributions by others.
8.3: Does Marinetti work with GNO?
A#8.3: Recently, Richard Bennett has released Marinetti, a beta-level
TCP/IP stack for the IIgs that does not require GNO.
Experimentation with the Marinetti/GNO combination has been
sketchy so far. However, here are some initial observations,
in no particular order:
- Running individual programs that rely on Marinetti seem
to work the same way under GNO as they do without GNO.
(However, see the following observations.)
- Processes are unable to block while waiting for input.
Therefore, they must do a "busy wait". While this does
not normally matter on the GS, it is considered to be
Rude Behavior under GNO since it steals clock cycles that
could be used by other processes.
- It would be inadvisable to have Marinetti block a process
that is waiting on input, since GNO is in a mutex state when
accessing the ToolBox. Therefore, if Marinetti were to block
a process, then all of GNO would be blocked.
- Development on the Marinetti/GNO combination is still in the
planning stage.
- The optimal method for programs running under the GNO/Marinetti
combination seems to be the the same way that GNO interacts
with GS/TCP; through the kernel. If programs limit themselves
to using the kernel interface (which uses BSD sockets) then
the kernel could potentially use either GS/TCP or Marinetti,
whichever is active. The kernel could worry about blocking
processes, ensuring an appropriate use of resources. The
kernel interfaces (user libraries) could perhaps be written
to use Marinetti directly in the case where GNO is not running.
This would allow a GNO-aware program to work either with
or without GNO.
Programs that use the Marinetti IPC mechanism directly will
probably still work under GNO, but can be expected to have
problems multitasking.
By the way, the above paragraph is pure rambling and supposition
by the FAQ maintainer. The GNO kernel currently knows nothing
about Marinetti.
- Richard has expressed a willingness to work with the GNO
development team to ensure that the two products can coexist.
For the latest status on Marinetti, see the Marinetti home page:
http://www.zip.com.au/~kashum/marinetti
If you have additional information regarding the Marinetti/GNO
combination, please email the maintainer of this FAQ.
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